Robert Salvatore - Sea of Swords

Delly had told him of the few glorious moments she had known—and none of those had been in the arms of one of her many lovers. She told him of the many hours she'd spent along the quiet wharves of Luskan before having to force herself to begin her nights at the Cutlass. There she'd sit and watch the sun sinking into the distant ocean, seeming to set all the water ablaze.

Delly loved the dusk—the quiet hour, she called it—when the daytime folk of Luskan returned home to their families and the nighttime crowd had not yet awakened to the bustle of their adventurous but ultimately empty nights. In the months he'd known Delly at the Cutlass, in the nights they'd spent in each others' arms, Wulfgar had never begun to imagine that there was so much more to her, that she was possessed of hopes and dreams, and that she held such a deep understanding of the people around her. When men bedded her, they often thought her an easy target, tossing a few words of compliment to get their prize.

What Wulfgar came to understand about Delly was that none of those words, none of that game, had ever really meant anything to her. Her one measure of power on the streets was her body, and so she used it to gain favor, to gain knowledge, to gain security, in a place lacking in all three. How strange it seemed to Wulfgar to recognize that while all the men had believed they were taking advantage of Delly's ignorance, she was, in fact, taking advantage of their weakness in the face of lust.

Yes, Delly Curtie could play the “using” game as well as any, and that was why this blossoming relationship seemed so amazing to him. Because Delly wasn't using him at all, he knew, and he wasn't using her. For the first time in all their history together, the two had merely been sharing each others' company, honestly and without pretense, without an agenda.

And Wulfgar would be a liar indeed if he couldn't admit that he was enjoying it.

A liar Wulfgar would be indeed, and a coward besides, if he couldn't admit that he'd fallen in love with Delly Curtie. Thus, the couple had married. Not formally, but in heart and soul, and Wulfgar knew that this woman, this unlikely companion, had completed him in ways he had never known possible.

“Killer banner up!” came a call from the crow's nest, meaning that this was indeed a pirate vessel ahead of Sea Sprite, for in her arrogance, she was flying a recognized pirate pennant.

With nothing but open water ahead, the ship had no chance of escape. No vessel on the Sword Coast could outrun Sea Sprite, especially with the powerful wizard Robillard sitting atop the back of the flying bridge, summoning gusts of wind repeatedly into the schooner's mainsail.

Wulfgar took a deep breath, and another, but found little in them to help steady his nerves.

/ am a warrior! he reminded himself, but that other truth, that he was a husband and a father, would not be so easily put down.

How strange this change in heart seemed to him. Just a few months before, he had been the terror of Luskan, throwing himself into fights with abandon, reckless to the point of self-destructive. But that was when he had nothing to lose, when he believed that death would take away the pain. Now, it was something even greater than those things he had to lose, it was the realization that if he perished out here, Delly and Colson would suffer.

And for what? the barbarian had to ask himself. For a warhammer, a symbol of a past he wasn't even sure he wanted to recapture?

Wulfgar grabbed tight to the line running back to the foremast, clenching it so tightly his knuckles whitened from the press, and again took in a deep and steadying breath, letting it out as a feral growl. Wulfgar shook the thoughts away, recognizing them as anathema to the heart of a true warrior. Charge in bravely, that was his mantra, his code, and indeed, that was the way a true warrior survived. Overwhelm your enemies, and quickly, and you will likely walk away. Hesitation only provided opportunity for the enemy to shoot you down with arrows and spears.

Hesitation, cowardice, would destroy him.

* * * * * * * * *

Sea Sprite gained quickly on the vessel, and soon it could be seen clearly as a two-masted caravel. How fast that pirate insignia pennant came down when the ship recognized its pursuer!

Sea Sprite's rear catapult and forward ballista both let fly, neither scoring a hit of any consequence, and the pirate responded with a catapult shot of its own, a meager thing that fell far short of the approaching hunter.

“A second volley?” Captain Deudermont asked his ship's wizard. The captain was a tall and straight-backed man with a perfectly trimmed goatee that was still more brown than gray.

“To coax?” Robillard replied. “Nay, if they've a wizard, he is too cagey to be baited, else he would have shown himself already. Move into true range and let fly, and so will I.”

Deudermont nodded and lifted his spyglass to his eye to better see the pirate—and he could make out the individuals on the deck now, scrambling every which way.

Sea Sprite closed with every passing second, her sails gathering up the wind greedily, her prow cutting walls of water high into the air.

Deudermont looked behind, to his gunners manning the catapult on the poop deck. One used a spyglass much like the captain's own, lining up the vessel with a marked stick set before him. He lowered the glass to see the captain and nodded.

“Let fly for mainsail,” Deudermont said to the crewman beside him, and the cry went out, gaining momentum and volume, and both catapult and ballista let fly again. This time, a ball of burning pitch clipped the sails and rigging of the pirate, who was bending hard into a desperate turn, and the ballista bolt, trailing chains, tore through a sail.

A moment later came a brilliant flash, a streak of lightning from Robillard that smacked the pirate's hull at the water line, splintering wood.

“Going defensive!” came Robillard's cry, and he enacted a semitranslucent globe about him and rushed to the prow, shoving past Wulfgar, who was moving amidships.

A responding lightning bolt did come from the pirate, not nearly as searing and bright as Robillard's. Sea Sprite's wizard, considered among the very finest of sea-fighting mages in all Faerыn, had his shields in place to minimize the damage to no more than a black scar on the side of Sea Sprite's prow, one of many badges of honor the proud pirate hunter had earned in her years of service.

The pirate continued its evasive turn, but Sea Sprite, more nimble by far, cut right inside her angle, closing even more rapidly.

Deudermont smiled as he considered Robillard, the wizard nibbing his fingers together eagerly, ready to drop a series of spells to counter any defenses, followed by a devastating fireball that would consume rigging and sails, leaving the pirate dead in the water.

The pirates would likely surrender soon after.

* * * * * * * * * *

A row of archers lined Sea Sprite's side rail, with several standing forward, as obvious targets, Robillard had placed enchantments on these few, making them impervious to unenchanted arrows, and so they were the brave ones inviting the shots.

“Volley as we pass!” the group leader commanded, and every man and woman began checking their draw and their arrows, finding ones that would fly straight and true.

Behind them, Wulfgar paced nervously, anxiously. He wanted this to be done—a perfectly reasonable and rational desire—and yet he cursed himself for those feelings.

“A pop to steady yer hands?” one greasy crewman said to him, holding forth a small bottle of rum, which the boarding party had been passing around.

Wulfgar stared at the bottle long and hard. For months he had hidden inside one of those seemingly transparent things. For months he had bottled up his fears and his horrible memories, a futile attempt to escape the truth of his life and his past.